Today 10 Downing Street responded to a petition that closed on 11 June 2008 from Roy and Joan Brentnall of Canada. It asked the Prime Minister to remove the discrimination against British State pensioners who retire to the Commonwealth countries rather than Europe or the USA. It has taken over 60 days to produce a response.

It is largely a copy and paste version of what was given to a petition on January third of this year. Perhaps as a signal of the priority given to UK pensioners, even the copy and pasting created an unintelligible sentence.

Meanwhile 10 Downing Street is now Twittering, another attention-getting activity to take them away from the real priorities.

<pulls out the popcorn, sits and waits!>

With nothing better to do Steve pulls up a chair too.

One bucket of water. One bucket of sand. Light blue touch paper.............

<contemplates wading in>

<decides to pull up a chair and much popcorn instead>

May I be the first to suggest that there's no injustice here? If British pensioners living in Canada would like their pensions index linked they should move elsewhere. Furthermore, the British public is never going to be receptive to the idea of paying more to people who have voluntarily left, not to say abandoned, their country.

This argument is like marital sex, it's all a bit rote but there's still some fun in it.

<petulant mode>

It's soooo unfair

</petulant mode>

The discrimination against UK pensioners in Commonwealth countries in freezing pensions at retirement age levels is grossly unfair. I live in Langley BC, Canada. If I had chosen to live in Bellingham, Washington, USA just 40 miles away or 1 hour by car, then I would be receiving exactly the same pension treatment as if I still lived in the UK. Equally if I had travelled east rather than west and lived in Berlin, Germany, at almost the same latitude as Langley, then I would be receiving exactly the same pension treatment as if I still lived in the UK.

To the OP.

You have 20 posts on this website and everyone of them is complaining about this perceived injustice.

Have you nothing else going on in your life or is this topic all encompassing?

So, if the pension indexing is very important to you, move to Bellingham or Berlin or Birmingham.

Yep, the government's attitude to the whole latitude thing stinks.

And he is 'shit stirring' all over the world too

With all of the boomers retiring and, given the sad state of pension funds and savings in general, they are more likely to stop indexing-linking the countries that are, rather than index link those that are not.

<Idly contemplates the amount that he will get in a UK state pension after 15 years NI contributions and decides it's just not worth worrying about>

[QUOTE=BWelford;6676568]Meanwhile 10 Downing Street is now Twittering, another attention-getting activity to take them away from the real priorities.[QUOTE]



Man, you gotta love single-issue fanatics!

If I were PM I'd offer to give the index-linked rise to everyone, but only on the proviso that they collect their pensions in person at a UK Post Office every Tuesday morning.

Otherwise shut the f*** up and be grateful you're able to collect anything. It's more than most of us who are still years off pension age will ever get.